We fall for lies because we want to be told what can’t possibly be true.
This formulation came to me recently. Shouldn’t be much of a surprise why lies might come into focus these days….
The only way I know of to gain traction with what troubles me/us is to find how my own expectations and the projections they feed set up the conditions for that trouble to appear as an external force.
This is completely alien to the so-called active mind-set that seeks out enemies and then ways to vanquish them. From within that paradigm none of what I have to say here makes any sense. From within this other paradigm trying to convince anyone that they are wrong and should agree with me doesn’t make any sense.
What follows exists on the other side of a line. The leap required to get there cannot be imposed on anyone. No insistence on “The Facts!” or demands that we “Be Reasonable!” will get anyone across.
We fall for lies because we want to be told what can’t possibly be true.
When we sit with this formulation we find ways to proceed. We’re no longer stuck. We find agency. Not the pseudo-agency of the Man-of-action.
What we call action in the common form is already a sign of failure, of capitulation. It is a reaction taken in anger, out of frustration. Our organism knows this. There is always going to be a drag on its momentum.
Our heart is not in it. At least not without a tremendous expenditure of energy aimed at working us up into a state. A state of enthusiasm? Enthusiasm: filled with the breath of the gods. Put it that way and it doesn’t seem to line up with our common experience. Revved to a frenzy over a sports team or corralled into a rage by the latest demagogue; we can hardly equate that with any divine inhalation….
We exist in a chronic state of exhaustion and we are plagued by an inability to see how our conditioned reactions keep us from recovery. Even “Blaming Ego!” ends up creating another externalized enemy-within. We get caught up in games as that clever little devil, Ego finds ways to cloak its shenanigans in ever-more disguised striving.
The heuristics we need to navigate this complexity are here for us to use. The key sign of camouflaged Ego is always betrayed by the essential striving underlying all its demands. Instead of girding our selves to try harder, to “Get our hearts into the fight!” Listening to those buried hesitations not only saves us the trauma of another Ego-driven machination. It begins to release the energy buried in our striving.
Horizons of Significance 
Yes. Telling the truth of these shenanigans even to ourselves, if only to ourselves. Finding in the shenanigans the actuality of what is happening without looking past it to a resolution is an immersion in the real activity of life.
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I love the word shenanigans! It says something about the way we may avoid being sucked-in while at the same time remaining aware of what is going on. We keep a wary eye on shenanigans without falling for the the false sincerity it plays on. We can know it is there and is a factor, Hey watch out! Without taking sides and thinking that will lead anywhere but back into the deepest mess.
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I thought our conversation went well really. Covered a lot of ground and kept right at the source of the difference. That’s a pretty powerful thing to do, and not all that common an experience. The book Ceremony is my way of trying to honor what you’re saying. I believe it talks very directly about your vision. The changing of the ceremonies (in the book) is much like what you seem to mean by the intelligent re-vivifying of habit. Intelligent habit. Let’s just be downright honorably open about the fact that what I’m pursuing on NG is in some ways the reverse of that, but I LOVE Ceremony, nevertheless, and all that is implied in that approach. I love it. But it’s not mine, that’s all. I got another thing I’m trying to do. I see incoherence itself as a kind of “ritual” of awakening to actuality (the negation of what is purely cerebral). To me, It is by negation of the abstract that the physical world becomes more deeply sensed. To me, at every moment the “real” world is knocking on our door by way of error. The discovery of an incoherence between thought and thing opens up an undivided perspective without the need for anything else. People who say to me “look, that is actuality” perform a ritual that seems more direct to me than anything else. The only times I’ve ever felt alive is when I’ve read or heard or felt that contact with incoherence, which changed how I saw the world, and therefore what actions were possible. Then even the shapes of things have a non-conceptual “meaning” — something of the real personality of trees in the wind, of a river, of mountains and sky can be felt directly, without thought separating the world into observed and observer. This gap may not be bridged in our approaches, but I honestly don’t give a shit if we bridge it or not, because the universe is large enough to be explored in both directions
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Error, or incoherence is an essential part of change. It’s there in natural selection working on mutation. When it comes to psychological? change, it seems to be the way we interact with error or incoherence that gives us traction. It’s whether we perceive the incoherence without being caught in projection and then whether we can give our attention to this perception of incoherence to see where it might show “what actions were (are) possible.”
For me, the key to responding to any insight is in not landing on it and sticking. Every approach, every particular insight, is partial. It’s only by staying receptive to what is emerging at this moment that we can be vital.
The vibrations between close, but not identical perspectives – How could two people have identical perspectives in any case? – is a great opportunity to expand our perspectives. Bridging these gaps is not smoothing out the differences. It is an opportunity to go where no individual alone can go. This is the point where dialogue takes place.
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I also feel one can’t stick with the incoherence. From here, the incoherence, properly met, requires no formulation of an alternative path, but unfolds the new vision by the very negation of the properly met error. I wonder if there’s a deeper connection in the visions buried in this.
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“I wonder if there’s a deeper connection in the visions buried in this.”
Music to my ears!
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